Hey, how about that? Apple finally snagged a number one slot from PC Data's monthly retail sales statistics. According to a MacCentral article, the iMac was the number one selling personal computer in November, both in retail stores and via mail order houses. Thus ends the arithmetic progression established by the iMac's first three months on the charts: fourth in August, third in September, second in October, and Numero Uno in the merry month of November. (What's on deck for December? Zero-th place?)

Apparently, for every fourteen computers sold in November, one of them was an iMac. It may not sound too impressive when expressed that way, but apparently the iMac's 7.1% of the market was the best there was. But wait-- that's not all. In addition to claiming the number one slot in the November stats, PC Data claims that the iMac was also the best selling computer on the market since it first hit the shelves in August, and the only system to make the top-five list for each of the last four months. So apparently the good news just keeps on coming.

Sounds like Apple's well on track to sell something like half a million iMacs before the end of the year. You can bet that iMac sales fun facts will figure heavily during Steve Jobs' Macworld keynote in a couple of weeks-- and it wouldn't be a bad lead-in to the introduction of Yosemite. "Numbers don't lie: the iMac revolutionized the way people think about consumer computers. And now we're about to make you all think differently about what a professional system should be like." We can hardly wait.

Okay, so the iMac was the number one selling computer in November. What's going to happen in December? Well, we figure that things are only going to get better. After all, December's when the serious holiday sales would presumably kick in, and the $30-a-month consumer loan program is still in full swing, so that's got to help, too. But the real factor that could make the iMac a grand slam in December is the price drop to $999. Now, before you bite our heads off over this, let's just make it clear that we are fully aware that Apple has not dropped the price of the iMac: it's still $1299, the same as on the day it was announced way back in May. But Best Buy didn't feel like waiting for Apple to send the iMac into sub-$1000-land, so they went ahead and took matters into their own hands.

Needless to say, Apple probably didn't like that move one bit-- a fact "confirmed" by Mac OS Rumors. Because once Best Buy dropped its iMac price below $1000, suddenly everyone else selling iMacs felt compelled to do something similar in order to compete. CompUSA, for example, had a non-advertised $999 price for iMacs in many of its stores this past weekend, and even MacWarehouse (never our choice for "lowest price available") apparently included a last-minute flyer in its latest catalog hawking iMacs for the $999 price. In addition, reports have been filtering in that many smaller resellers have felt "forced" into offering similar prices.

That's all great for the consumers who can snap up an iMac for such a low price, but it's more than a little tough on the resellers. According to a Webintosh article, a coalition of Mac resellers is considering filing a class action lawsuit against Best Buy for selling the iMac for so little-- as it turns out, the wholesale dealer price on the iMac is $1184.90, meaning that Best Buy started selling iMacs at a couple of hundred dollars below cost. Even Best Buy's "adjusted price" of $1099, posted on Friday, is too low for resellers to make a profit. So with Apple and a horde of unhappy, litigious resellers screaming for blood, the latest reports claim that Best Buy's iMac price will indeed rise again to $1279 by the end of the week. Our advice is this: if you find an iMac being sold for $1099 or less, snap it up quickly, because you probably won't get another chance at such a deal until the official price drop coming in February, or whenever. So Merry Christmas.

So things in the consumer Macintosh world are definitely hopping, but let's talk about what's happening on the professional side of Apple's product line for a minute. You all know about Yosemite, the new professional G3 Power Macs due to be released in two weeks' time; to recap, these are screaming fast machines with real, honest-to-goodness professional-level subsystems-- not just mid-range "prosumer" computers that happened to be fast enough for Apple to reposition them as pro systems while they worked on the real professional Macs. There's no question about this: Mac-using professionals are going to want Yosemite's faster bus, higher RAM ceiling, super-fast graphics system, etc. (We know, because we're Mac-using professionals, and we're coping with a serious bout of hardware lust right now.) But believe it or not, it's not Yosemite's spec list that's going to sell scads of these machines, it's the look and feel of the El Capitan case. Whereas the iMac is a sales blockbuster partially because it's "cute," Yosemite just might break sales records because it's "sexy." Curvy, translucent midnight blue with blue LED indicators? Sign us up.

And the good news is, by most reports, Yosemite won't necessarily cost an arm and a leg; pricing is supposed to echo the price points of the current Power Macintosh G3 line, whose beigeness Yosemite is replacing in January. That means we should be able to pick up a low-end Yosemite system for about $1600 or so-- and even if it costs more than that, we're willing to bet that Apple will keep the entry-level price below $1999 at the absolute most. Not too shabby, right? You can get a terrifically fast new Mac without breaking the bank, and it doubles as a room decoration-- don't forget the "modern sculpture" factor when justifying the price.

Unfortunately, if you replace your boxy old beige Mac with a curvaceous blue Power Mac G3 Pro (or whatever they plan on calling these things), you're going to notice something about your monitor: unless you've got an Apple Studio Display, it's not going to match. Sticking Apple's latest industrial design next to a dirty old monitor with harsh angles and plastics only a mother could love is going to seem like a crime against taste. The solution? Whip out that credit card and pick up a new display from Apple. Apple Insider has a report on the new "Moby" and "Chablis" monitors, including a little sketch of what they look like. Think "big iMac." Think "curves and translucent blue." Think "irresistible complement to the Yosemite." And lastly, think "really expensive." Suddenly, the cost of replacing your Mac just went up; it's like when you buy new curtains and realize that you have to replace the carpet to match. All we can say is, start hoarding those dollars and cents, because when Yosemite and the new displays are unveiled, by all reports they are going to be hard to resist.